Enough Debating About Government and the Arts

There has been an explosion of arts activity in the United States in the last 20 years, and the National Endowment of the Arts deserves a major share of the credit. But the endowment has made a mere handful of grants, the reaction to which has all but eclipsed the great good brought by the vast majority of grants. The subjects of these few grants--the exhibition of explicitly sadomasochistic photographs and the publication of a book entitled “Live Sex Acts,” for example--have been understandably offensive in the extreme to the vast majority of Americans. The right of artists to create such works is beyond question. The controversy has only to do with the expenditure of public funds in which the taxpayer has a proper interest.

Because of shrill attacks on the endowment by people with different but all-destructive agendas, the Congress authorized a bipartisan commission charged with reviewing the endowment’s grant-making procedures. The unanimous report, issued in September, 1990, called for, among other things, greater scrutiny of proposed grants. Most important, the commission unanimously recommended “against legislative changes to impose specific restrictions on the content of works of art supported by the endowment.”

So where are we in the matter of government and the arts and, more particularly, the endowment?

It is an indelible mark of our democracy that when public monies are expended on a thing, the public will expect to have its say. Politically, it is as practical to suggest that only artists should have a say about federal arts funding as it is to suggest that only the Department of Defense should have a say about defense spending. The federal government cannot be a totally disinterested patron of anything; the dollars it contributes to the arts, and everything else, have been extracted through the compulsion of civil law from the pockets of the people. The voices of the people and their government thus have their places in this debate.

That debate has gone on too long and taken too high a toll. The endowment has just lost its head to political expediency. Some artists and art administrators--who deny the reality of accountability in the expenditure of public funds--continue to insist that artists be given public money to spend as only they see fit. Their attitude is that if the art offends people and is contrary to generally accepted and reasonable standards, so be it. People don’t have to look at or listen to it, they just have to pay for it. This proud posture crosses the line into arrogance and unreality, and plays into the hands of the demagogues of the right.

So what are we, who admire the National Endowment, to do? I propose a compromise: We strengthen our positions where we agree and moderate our positions where we disagree.

First, we must stop insisting on moral absolutes in a public, political environment that, by its very nature, cannot deal with moral absolutes on so subjective a subject. Let’s all calm down.

Second, we must not forget that there are too many out there who think the arts are not very important and peripheral to their lives and interest. Therefore, those of us who understand the importance of the arts in enriching the spirit must work with ever greater vigor to personally support the arts and communicate our strong belief in these matters to our elected representatives. We can with quiet, polite, and persistent logic more than match reactionary bombast.

Third, the arts community should recognize that artistic freedom has never been at issue in this controversy. The expenditure of public funds has. Those who will condemn the endowment if it doesn’t make a few grants must be careful, lest they sound just like those who will condemn it if it does . We are reaching the dangerous but familiar point where the misguided on both sides of an issue have taken up what is, in essence, the same chant.

Finally, and most important of all, the National Council and the chairman and his staff must not fear to exert their fiduciary responsibility not only to support traditional art forms but also to encourage experimentation at the cutting edge. But they should reconsider the use of public funds to support art that is overwhelmingly offensive to the mores of a large majority of the citizenry, else such support bring the whole temple down. There is too much at stake to risk all on what would prove to be a Pyrrhic victory.

I do not believe it is asking too much of anyone, including those in the arts community, just to use good common sense.